The challenge in treating patients with borderline resectable pancreatic cancer is how to render tumors resectable and how to achieve the negative surgical margins that enhance long-term survival odds. Fortunately, neoadjuvant chemotherapy is helping to achieve these important goals, according to a presentation given at the 2020 Debates and Didactics in Hematology and Oncology Virtual Conference.
In a phase I trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Andrea B. Apolo, MD, and colleagues found that the combination of cabozantinib and nivolumab, as well as the combination of cabozantinib/nivolumab plus ipilimumab, produced durable responses in patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma and other genitourinary malignancies.
A prospective biomarker analysis of the multicohort phase II KEYNOTE-158 trial reported by Marabelle et al in The Lancet Oncology found that patients with previously treated advanced solid tumors were more likely to respond to pembrolizumab monotherapy if they had high tissue tumor mutational burden.
Combined use of aspirin, metformin, and statins may be associated with decreased lung cancer incidence and mortality, according to a study published by Kang et al in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology.
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Long-term findings from the phase III CheckMate 238 study showed that nivolumab improved 4-year recurrence-free survival compared with ipilimumab in patients with resected stage IIIB to C or IV melanoma in the overall population as well as across subgroups of patients stratified by disease stage and PD-L1 expression levels. The findings were presented by Jeffrey Weber, MD, PhD, at the ESMO Virtual Congress 2020.
In the TRANSCEND NHL 001 study reported in The Lancet, Jeremy S. Abramson, MD, and colleagues found that the autologous CD19-directed chimeric antigen receptor T-cell agent lisocabtagene maraleucel produced a high response rate in patients with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphomas.
Adolescents and young adults with lymphoma are a unique population, with distinct biology, disparities in outcome, poorer survival compared with children and adults, and variable impacts of treatments. Ongoing research on this patient population with lymphoma will hopefully lead to improved understanding of this entity, better therapies, and improved outcomes, according to experts who spoke at the 2020 American Association for Cancer Research Virtual Meeting: Advances in Malignant Lymphoma.
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Paolo Ghia, MD, PhD, of the Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milan, Italy, and colleagues, the phase III ASCEND trial showed significantly prolonged progression-free survival with acalabrutinib monotherapy vs the investigator’s choice of either idelalisib plus rituximab or bendamustine plus rituximab in adult patients with relapsed/refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). The trial supported the November 2019 approval of acalabrutinib for the treatment of adults with chronic CLL or small lymphocytic lymphoma.
